Casualties of Altered Fate
by Malvolia
Summary: Creating a new destiny didn't just end lives, it twisted them...and some things that could have been never were. A story of Folken and his young apprentice.
1. Dilandau's Eyes

A swing at the arm, sidestepped. A thrust at the chest, parried. Dilandau's eyes flash brighter than his sword as it sweeps through the air, aimed directly for his superior's head. He doesn't hold anything back in these sparring sessions, but then neither does Folken.

The older man blocks high and simultaneously calls for a halt before the younger can make another move. Folken doesn't know what the Sorcerors did to create Dilandau, but the young man actually seems to _gain _energy the longer he fights. Normal men—or those closer to normal, because nobody in Emperor Dornkirk's service merits the term on its own—will tire after half an hour's frenzied sparring, and these two have been at it for forty-five minutes.

Dilandau throws his sword down casually, a familiar sneer on his face. "Too much for you, Strategos?" he asks. Though he uses the term of respect, every syllable drips "old man."

In the beginning, Folken had responded to these little barbs, the hints that his time had come and gone. Now, he simply quirks a corner of his mouth and watches as his sometime protégé grimaces in fury. More than anything, Dilandau hates not fighting.

There is wine laid out for them on the table. Folken pours it into two glasses and takes his seat calmly, laughing inside when his companion vents his frustration by hurling himself forcefully into his chair. Dilandau stares morosely into his glass, running a finger over one cheek, then another. He's looking at his reflection.

Folken isn't sure, but he thinks it may be that the only thing Dilandau likes more than battle is the sight of his own face. Certainly there have been other times like this, when he has caught the younger man gazing contemplatively into a reflective surface. The eyes seem bluer in these times, less shockingly violet. Something about those eyes makes him feel as though they could be friends, the two of them, at some other time and in some other place, without sharing this purpose.

Dilandau looks up, eyes bluer than they've ever been before, and for a split second he seems confused by the man across from him. His face flushes, and he opens his mouth to speak: "Folken Fanel...?" For some reason he can't comprehend, Folken's heart twinges, and in this surreal moment he senses a gravity here, too. Then Dilandau's eyes are that unsettling shade of violet once more, and the words coming out of his mouth are typically venomous and poorly considered, and everything is back to normal.

As close to normal as you could get, serving Emperor Dornkirk.


	2. Celena's Dreams

Things come back, gradually.

She wakes up one night screaming and Allen has to stay up with her for hours. She never does go back to sleep that night, and it takes several days for her to gather herself enough to tell him what it was she saw.

_A soldier._

_A prison._

_A mob._

Next she dreams of Jajuka.

_In the prison, bringing her food and whispering jokes and holding her while she cried against his soft fur._

_Held down by the mob as strange men dragged her away._

_Taking a snail from her hands...he is smaller in this dream, or she is bigger. She doesn't have to crane her neck so far to see his face._

When the next round of dreams hit—

_dark rooms full of scientists and needles_

_cold fluid through her veins_

_pain, darkness, pain, screaming_

—the thought of Jajuka keeps her from going completely mad.

Allen does what he can, but he wasn't there. She knows he wishes he had been, but he wasn't. He doesn't know. Jajuka knew. He was there. He loved her when nobody loved her. He tried to protect her when everybody else was trying to use her. Jajuka knew. And so even now, his memory keeps her sane. She imagines his voice calling her name, and it keeps her...what? Herself?

Allen knows something he isn't telling her.

_A dimly lit room._

_Wine glasses._

_A startled face._

This is the dream that haunts her longest, the one she fights to have again and again. It seems important, so important, yet she doesn't know where the room is or who the man is. Somehow she doesn't think he knows who she is, either.

They could have been friends.

_Two startled faces._

Finally, after dozens of iterations, a name: "Folken Fanel...?"

She wakes up reassured that she isn't slipping into unreality. She'd seen the eldest prince of Fanelia once, in a procession. Even as a young girl, she remembered thinking him a striking figure. And she knows his brother now, Van Fanel. He's one of Allen's friends from the war.

Strange, though, dreaming about Folken Fanel after all those years. Did he always have that tattoo in the shape of a tear, or did that come with the dream, symbolizing...what?

She decides, rather uneasily, that it's probably nothing.

She doesn't even like wine.


	3. Allen's Explanation

Celena closed her eyes as the breeze lifted the ringlets around her face. Her hair was growing out again, although she despaired of it ever being longer than her brother's. She seemed to have lost the trick of caring for it, somehow.

"Allen?"

"Yes, Celena?"

She didn't look at him. "Where was I?"

"Where were you?"

He was stalling for time, she knew. She had asked the question several times over the past year, and he always stalled before answering, even though his answer was always the same. He would say that she had been taken by Zaibach, that she was gone for ten years, that he wasn't certain about what happened when she was gone. She wouldn't believe him, not entirely. He still had the same lying face he used to have when they were children, the one where the muscles hardly moved and his gaze was fixed straight ahead. He knew more than he was revealing.

"When I was gone. When I was a prisoner. Where was I?"

"It pains me to talk of this."

"Does it?" She opened her eyes and lay back in the grass. "It seems so far away to me. Like I wasn't even there."

A glance over showed her brother staring in front of him.

"The nightmares aren't so terrible anymore," she offered.

"Your screaming hasn't stopped."

"I've gotten used to it."

Allen bowed his head and rested his clenched fists on his knees.

"It's not your fault," she said. "We'd played hide-and-seek hundreds of times in that field. You couldn't know."

"I should have saved you."

"How could you? You didn't even know where I was."

"I should have."

"Why?"

Silence.

"Allen, please. Where was I? It hurts, trying to remember."

"Don't try!" he snapped. "Don't try to recall that time!"

"Allen..."

"They changed you," he said, his voice raw. "I don't want you trying to remember who you were. It might..."

"...change me back?"

A flash from a dream. A startled face.

"Brother, was Folken Fanel there? Was he part of the change?"

"You remember?"

"A disconnected memory. It doesn't seem to fit."

Allen sighed. "He was there. But he wasn't part of the change. He didn't know you were Celena."

"Ah, I see. All along I've been asking the wrong question." She sat up. "_Who_ was I?"

He brother smirked in begrudging admiration of her persistence. "His name was Dilandau. He was a warrior, ruthless. The opposite of you. We...we fought."

"We fought?"

"No!" Allen grasped her shoulders. "I fought _him_. Not _you_. Never you." He pulled her forward and held her close. "I should have recognized.... Something in the voice. Something."

"And Folken?"

"He fought beside Dilandau."

"Were we friends?"

"_Dilandau_"—the emphasis on the name was as strong as Allen could make it—"had no friends."

"I...he would have been lonely."

Allen's only response was to squeeze her tighter.

* * *

That night she woke up and saw a familiar person standing beside her bed.

"It's Folken, isn't it?"

He nodded.

"Allen told me about Dilandau."

"I waited until you knew. It would only have confused you to see me before."

"Why are you here now?"

"To offer my regrets. And my aid."

Celena looked at him quizzically.

"I can help keep the nightmares away."

"To sleep without nightmares...I hardly remember.... Thank you," she smiled, and was pleased when he returned it. "Were we friends? Dilandau and you?"

"Almost," he said. "Not quite."

"You and I would have been."

"We will be. For now, sleep."

Celena yawned. "Will I see you again?"

"Whenever you wish it. I'll be watching over you."

An overwhelming tiredness came over Celena, and her eyes drifted shut.

She dreamed of angel wings.


End file.
